Squid are caught in many waters of the world and are a source of food. The squid has a tube body covered on the outside with skin and fins. Inside the tube body are viscera and a pen or backbone. Attached near the opening of the tube body is a head with tentacles. The portions of the squid used for food are the tube body and the tentacles. Cleaning of squid has been a manual process, which requires the removal of the head and viscera from their attachment point inside the tube body, the removal of the skin and fins from the outside of the tube body, and the removal of the pen, which is embedded on the inside of the tube body. Persons skilled in the cleaning of squid are becoming more difficult to find and more expensive to employ. Often, freshly caught squid are frozen and shipped great distances to areas of inexpensive labor where they are thawed, cleaned, frozen again, and shipped to market.
There are designs for machines to clean squid known in the art, although it is not known that any machine is in wide commercial use. These machines tend to be mechanically complex, making them unsuitable for use in a seafood processing environment. Some of the machines have sharp blades and other features that make them dangerous to be used by semi-skilled labor in a seafood processing environment.
An improved method and apparatus for processing squid is needed in order to lower the cost and increase the supply of edible squid.
The present invention is a method and apparatus for processing squid. A squid is placed on a spike and is conveyed past a backstructure surface causing the squid to spin about the spike, the friction against the outside and the inside of the squid tube body causes the loosening and the removal of parts of the squid attached to the tube body, thereby cleaning the squid. The cleaning action can be enhanced by spraying the squid with water or air, and by drawing material away from the squid with a suction device.